Gandhigiri reloaded

Mahatma Gandhi was one of those people,simultaneously inspiring and three-dimensional,who will always continue to surprise sometimes when their influence on someone unexpected is revealed. Not many would have expected,for example,that the world leader most desirous of writing a book about him would be Gordon Brown,Britains embattled prime minister.

What is it about Gandhi that appeals to Brown? Not,presumably,his personal austerity or his views on the economy. No,it was that he sought to win by changing peoples hearts and minds and he managed to do so, Brown said,in an interview to a British Asian magazine. Browns enemies will be startled: a common criticism of the premier is that he loves power a little too much,was willing to wait for it a little too long,and doesnt want to give it up once hes got it even if his party might want him to. So Brown saying that Gandhi was one of the great leaders of the twentieth century precisely because he didnt seek power will strike some of them as a little infuriating.

But even more striking was Browns casual usage of Gandhi as one of the great contributors to our civilisation. What did he mean? Western civilisation,which Gandhi famously described as a good idea? More probably,however,he meant modern Britains cultural landscape,an effortless,organic pastiche of the unreconstructed and the postcolonial,one where Churchill and Gandhi seem to be united in memory as they pretty definitely werent in life. How else to explain how even Browns least presentable rival,the far-right leader David Griffin,also said this week that Gandhi was a personal hero for his distributism,a philosophy opposed to big government and big corporations alike. Gandhians,it appears,come in as many varieties as Gandhi had facets and those were very many.